Right now the CNN electoral map is flashing red and blue in my peripheral vision — as it has been for the past 16 hours. My roommates turned on the TV at 4 p.m. on Election Day, and we haven’t turned it off since.
Normally this special issue coincides with Homecoming, the first of Dartmouth’s three termly “big weekends.” But as we all already know, nothing about this fall is normal. Absent the usual hammering, sawing and bonfire wood-arranging fervor, this year’s Homecoming has been marked by a different kind of deconstruction.
My home this fall is in Enfield, New Hampshire, about 20 minutes from campus. I’m part of the significant portion of students living locally off campus, a community that spans several towns scattered within a roughly 45-minute radius of campus.
One of the few positive sides of the pandemic is that it’s helped us relearn to love the outdoors. The strict distancing guidelines in place to reduce COVID-19 transmission force us to plan any sizable gatherings outside. At Dartmouth, we’re blessed with beautiful natural surroundings, lots of green space and an institutional bent toward nature. However, we’re also blessed with somewhat tumultuous weather.
The ritual of packing and unpacking has always marked the beginning of college. Students pack up their lives at home — at least mostly — and arrive on campus to start a new life for the next nine months. Their dorms, which were stark, undecorated bedrooms just days prior, are given a new life and personality by the things these students bring.
For many incoming LGBTQ+ students, their identity will add one more layer of disruption to a fall already full of unknowns.
This spring, the Black Lives Matter movement swept across the United States and the world. Millions of Americans attended protests, donated money, posted on social media and signed petitions.
The completion of a Dartmouth education means many things: celebration, new opportunities and hopefully the joyful acknowledgement of four transformative years. As Commencement rolls around, our natural inclination is to reflect on how Dartmouth changed us. However, I find it equally valuable to examine the ways in which we changed Dartmouth.
It’s a little early in my academic career for me to be writing a reflection piece about choosing my major. I’ve only been a Dartmouth student for two-and-a-half terms, and I just submitted my first D-Plan. But strangely, it feels like I’ve been in the process of choosing my major for years.
Despite having hours of alone time and access to a seemingly endless stream of inspirational posts about self-improvement in quarantine, I’ve found myself more stressed than ever. And as it turns out, I’m not alone.
The Dartmouth: Through the Ages presents a curated collection of the newspaper's archives from 1900 to the present.
